I struggle with happiness. If I do the liberty policy and try to expand quickly I run into alot of unhappiness problems. If I go Tradition and expand slowly I'm OK happiness-wise, but my empire grows too slow and my neighbors eat up the land around me. I do build the happiness buildings and trade resources, but it's still not enough sometimes. Any advice for maintaining happiness? Should I be choosing certain social policies? Backgound - I just play vs. computer and at one of the hardest levels ( but not the hardest). Don't have Gods and Kings yet. Thanks!

You should be going for SPs that boost happiness, plus building happiness buildings. The social policies can be a huge source of happiness. Settle near luxuries (esp new ones), and don't overlook the benefit of horses (circus is +2 happiness with no maint cost).

The key to happiness in this game is how you expand your cities. If I am thinking the numbers right, every city causes 3 unhappiness, and every citizen causes 1 unhappiness. For puppeted and annexed cities, those numbers will be higher. I tend to stop building new cities after I have 4 and focus on building happiness buildings. Many social policies help, and luxuries are vital.

Be smart with your luxuries. Each luxury resource only helps you once (if you have 5 dyes nearby, you only get a bonus from one of them), but you can trade the extras for additional luxuries with diplomacy. Early on, don't waste too much time developing extras of the same resource, instead focus on getting a variety of luxuries as soon as possible.

Once your happiness has recovered from the early expansion, start expanding again (unless you are playing cultural). If you are playing a war-heavy game, expansion isn't as important as taking enemy cities. In war, you should either puppet or raze captured cities, depending on your needs. Only annex a city if you intend to use it for production. Extra cities should probably be razed so they do not bring your happiness down. Puppets can be acceptable if your happiness is high enough.

One of the honor policies gives you a +1 happiness and +2 (I think) culture for having a military unit in a city. This is very helpful, not only does if give you that nice bonus, it also gives you a stronger city defense. There is also a policy that makes all walls and defensive buildings into happiness buildings. One of the policies (I think it's liberty) gives you +1 happiness for all trade routes. With just a garrison and trade route, you can eliminate half of the city's starting unhappiness with those, build a wall and a castle and you can completely eliminate the starting unhappiness.

There are world wonders, such as Notre Dame, and national wonders such as circus maximus that help with happiness.

And of course, don't be afraid to be slightly unhappy if it gets you to your goal easier. Just don't get beyond 10 unhappiness, especially in war time.

Thanks Ragan. One issue with growing slowly, is that the aggressive AI civilizations, who seem to have llike 50 happiness despite growing twice as fast as me, eat up so much land around me. How do you handle this? Do you threaten them to not settle near you? Do you wait until you're more powerful and try to conquer their encroaching cities? I always go for the science victory, so I don't tend to attack the AI civ's cities, but maybe I need to punish them more for their aggressiveness.

You just have to deal with it or go to war. The AI has a huge happiness boost that makes it easy for them to expand. You don't. You have to be thoughtful about where you expand anyway. If the AI picks an unclaimed land, they will be furious if you expand there. You have no way of knowing what lands they are claiming, sometimes it can be absurd. You can tell them not to settle near you, but I never noticed it do a bit of good. Just try to claim the luxury resources before anything else, and if you have a contested area, plan for a war.